decorated in cobalt-blue, raised red and green with black outlining on a white ground with a design of intersecting saz leaves and spiralling floral stems, peonies and roses, with two spiky half-flowers on either side
25.5 x 25.5 cm.

Footnotes

Provenance: Greek private collection.

This elegant tile relates directly to lunette panels in the Louvre, the Musee des Art Decoratifs and the Gulbenkian Foundation. The first of these panels came from the Piyale Pasha Mosque (1573) in Istanbul (G. Goodwin, A History of Ottoman Architecture, London, 1971, pp. 276-78). Piyale Pasha was a favourite of Selim II, whose daughter he married. Tahsin Oz records a tile of this type as from Sinan Ramazan Efendi (1596) in Istanbul, but with tulips instead of peonies (Tahsin Oz, Turkish Ceramics, Ankara, n.d., pl. LII). A variant of the general design with cloud scrolls amongst saz leaves is recorded as having neem used in the chamber of Murad III in Topkapi Palace, c. 1578 (C.P. Haase, J. Kroger and U. Lienart, Oriental Splendour: Islamic Art from German Private Collections, Hamburg, 1993, pp. 120-21). the design flourished for a decade or so from 1575. For another tile of this type in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha,and a discussion of the type, see John Carswell, Iznik Pottery for the Ottoman Empire, London, 2003, pp. 78-9, no. 20).

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- Islamic and Indian Art
- Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art

An Iznik pottery Tile Turkey, circa 1575

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